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Alone vs Solo (My Philosophy on Self Discovery)

You're never actually alone; you're always in relationship with yourself and the world.

Maya Emelle

9/15/20262 min read

“Are you going alone?”

“No girl, I’m going solo. I intend to meet people there.”

There’s a difference.

When I hear alone, I think separation. I think absence. I think there is something missing.

When I hear solo, I think independence, curiosity, and being open to whatever—or whoever—I might encounter.

And truth be told, we're never actually alone.

If you're alive, you're with someone: yourself.

Close your eyes. You can still hear your internal voice. You're still thinking, remembering, questioning, imagining. You never leave yourself.

So, technically, we're never alone.

And this is where solo travel gets interesting.

Say you're sitting at a restaurant by yourself and the waiter brings you the wrong meal. You don't just sit there staring at it because you're "alone." You advocate for yourself. You ask the waiter to correct it.

Someone misgenders you? You correct them.

Someone makes you uncomfortable? You leave.

Someone crosses a boundary? You address it.

You're constantly interacting with the world on your own behalf.

That's how you become comfortable with independence. You begin to realize:

I've got me.

A party of one isn't necessarily a lonely experience. It's a solo date with an entire cast of characters.

The waiter. The bartender. The person sitting next to you. The taxi driver. The stranger who recommends a restaurant. The woman you meet in the bathroom who somehow tells you her entire life story.

You may have arrived by yourself, but you are still participating in the world.

And if you're spiritual or religious, you may also believe that God is with you—or within you—guiding you toward your purpose.

Now, free will complicates the hell out of that.

Sometimes I'm like, Why do we even have free will? Why couldn't somebody just tell me my purpose at my thirteenth birthday and say, "Here you go, this is what you're supposed to do with your life."

Boom. Done.

But apparently that's not how this works.

And maybe that's the point.

I've always been curious about what else is out there. Even as a kid, being "hard-headed" was probably just another way of saying I wanted to discover things for myself.

I don't want to be handed the answer.

I want to experience it.

Because what's scarier: following social constructs and rules created by people you don't even know, or trusting your own discernment?

For me, the answer has always been the latter.

I'm willing to discover.

I'm willing to be wrong.

I'm willing to change my mind.

I'm willing to experience something I don't understand yet.

That's what going solo means to me.

Not being without people.

Being comfortable enough with yourself that you can enter the world without needing someone else to make the experience valid.

And somewhere along the way, you might discover that the person you thought you were traveling away from was actually the person you were traveling toward.

Yourself.

Contact

Email info@mayaemelle.com

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